Your Ten Favorite Shows Currently on Television

It's actually hilarious, especially Season 3. And Ann Dowd is fantastic in it. You should watch it.

I can only think of two or three real moments of violence in the series, although one goes pretty far.

It's not depressing, but it is about depression. As unperson says, at times it's a comedy but is frequently very funny.

yeah it definitely walks a very fine line between depressing & uplifting ... it’s not really one or the other but a unique combination of both

I thought the overall theme of The Leftovers was optimistic because there’s a bleak premise, people who are fighting against internal and external demons, and in the end they really keep continuing because of their bonds with each other. People even form new bonds and loves!

idk, it’s a dystopia where some people end up in darkness but the main cast ends up deciding life is worth it

I guess it might be in the very slim genre of “cynically optimistic” shows

Should I watch the expanse season 2 next or rewatch enlightened?

I watched 19 different TV shows that were airing this year which is unusually high for me. I'd say these were my favorites.

1. Twin Peaks ("event")
2. Mindhunter
3. Rick & Morty
4. GLOW
5. Big Little Lies (mini)
6. Broadchurch

good not great: five came back, feud, penn & teller fool us, mst3k, veep, leftovers, doctor who, handmaid's tale, stranger things, curb your enthusiasm

bad: sherlock, game of thrones, star trek discovery

so basically season 2 of search party is millennial crime & punishment

yep. and it's real good!

Here's my at the moment 9:
1) Desus and Mero - i hate that i am watching vice tho
2) Search Party
3) SMILF - Last episode was an extended and explicit take on Run Lola Run... the balls on this show! Rosie O'Donnell is a revelation, which is not something I thought I'd say ever.
4) At Home with Amy Sedaris - Pee Wee's Playhouse 2017
5) Colbert's Late Show monologues are somehow weirdly necessary
6) PBS Newshour but boy it's unpleasant
7) NBA
8) Rosehaven - Best in small doses but enjoyable
9) The Rundown with Robin Thede - Probably the best late night show on right now
10) The Good Place - Back soon!

Still Watching I Guess - Full Frontal, Curb

Need to try again with more focus: Girlfriend Experience (not with my girlfriend in the room apparently), American Gods, Stranger Things 2, Ken Burns' Vietnam

I suppose i should try again but don't know why: The Deuce, Twin Peaks

Fondly recently remembered: Nathan for You, Rick and Morty, One Mississippi, Better Things (mixed feelings there), Baroness Von Sketch (got kinda burned out at the end), Great British Baking Show, Difficult People, Insecure, Love You More pilot (this shit needs to go to series immediately)

Gave up: Broad City (empty calories now), You're the Worst (yeah nothing there for me), NFL (i'm out at least until the playoffs i guess), Big Little Lies (thought this was terrible!), Top of the Lake: China Girl (surprisingly straight garbage), Back (very mean!), TRL (this might be the worst thing on television right now), Runaways (made it three episodes... why so much focus on the adults? and wtf with the scratch soundtrack; maybe the worst music direction i've ever seen on a television show and the scripting isn't much better)

Coming up shortly: Happy!, Top Chef, Marvelous Miss Maisel

Where the fuck is: High Maintenance?

High Maintenance was renewed for a second HBO season, which is set to premiere January 19, 2018.[6][7]

Marvelous Mrs Maisel needs to parachute into that list somewhere v high up imo

I am loving it so much. The staging alone is just so ambitious and bravura. Long takes. Foreground and background dialogue overlapping and intersecting. It feels like a piece of theater, even a musical at times. There is however something at the heart of it that is really bothering me and it's painful as shit because I am a massive fan, and that is that we are supposed to believe that the main character is magically great at stand-up with no practice. It's the keystone of the plot but it's manifestly impossible. Famously impossible. It does it do a disservice to the hard-gigging milieu that A S-P valorizes. Like someone who's never picked up a guitar suddenly deciding to play like Jimi Hendrix. If that was your plot, the sudden Hendrix, you could explain that it was magical realism or something, and your actor could pretend to play while you dubbed in actual great guitar playing on the soundtrack. But they can't do that here. They have to get Rachel Brosnahan to actually be great, as great as Lenny Bruce. Which she just isn't. It turns out that impersonating a great comedian is essentially impossible. Even when you get the voice and the cadence right, like the guy playing Lenny Bruce, the rhythms and the energy and the ineffableness of it only comes from years and years of playing rooms. The show's Lenny is a cuddly version of the real thing, the edges sanded off. Less a seething mass of upper-addled bottled lightning and more a whimsical sweetie. I mean the show is a sweet show, so maybe that's why.

I keep trying to make excuses for this - like maybe Alex Borstein's hardened, seen-it-all pro is so taken with this complete amateur because she's never seen a women do filthy material before?

I mean, yeah yeah, suspension of disbelief, but I laughed more at Rupert Pupkin

glad to hear on high maintenance.

i have a #11 for that list: The President Show, which is much better than you'd expect

watched the pilot of the leftovers, liked it a lot, my wife liked it too despite the disappearing baby/shot dog combo within the first five minutes. it was weird seeing mark's boss from peep show in a big dramatic role.

It feels like a piece of theater, even a musical at times

yeah what i love about mrs maisel most so far is how much of the sensibility of bunheads carried over re: this stuff

i have a #11 for that list: The President Show, which is much better than you'd expect

― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Wednesday, December 6, 2017 8:30 AM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i took an improv class taught by the guy who plays trump, it's exactly as good as i expected (he's brilliant) if... a little hard to watch regularly

anyway here are my top shows of the year

1. twin peaks
2. riverdale

the end

kantaro the sweet tooth salaryman is my new number one. only watching one a night so that it lasts longer.

i'm also enjoying Marcella, a brit crime show that has Apollo from Battlestar in it in his native Britisher! i don't think i even knew he was British. it's nice to see him. it also has my fave actress from W1A in it. Marcella is by the Swedish guy who did The Bridge.

I tried w/ Marcella but couldn't get beyond the first couple

beyond Twin Peaks, Leftovers, and American Vandal, not a big TV year for me.

Twin Peaks, Nathan For You, Decker, Desus and Mero, Vice Principals, the final mini-season of Review. Still seeing Game of Thrones through to the end. That's it, I think, besides the NBA.

NFY and Review finales were great too of course. Also excited for the Errol Morris miniseries on MKULTRA.

It's funny how amidst all the talk of "Peak TV" I look at all these end-of-year lists and it's far more circumscribed than even music or film. I feel like every top 10 list has some combination of the same 20 shows. this thread is one of the very few places where I've found any real deviation.

well, there's still a lot fewer TV shows than movies, and fewer issues of access as to who can see what when

i just cant find anything i want to watch! water water everywhere etc

(but that's just based on synopses I read, meaningless really. you've gotta give stuff a try i suppose)

if you have netflix, watch Kantaro.

also, if Godless is considered a t.v. show, that makes my top ten now. i will replace Chef & My Fridge with Godless. i would love more Godless. don't know if they are planning to do that though.

which reminds me that i need to watch season 2 of Frontier. i might be the only person here who likes that one. i'm just a jason momoa fur-trapping kinda guy.

Runaways isn't bad per se but when the fuck are these kids going to run away?

runaways is weird because it feels like something an 8 year old kid wrote and directed but its probably not the best show to watch if you are an 8 year old kid.

Parts of it are really, really good. They did capture some of what made the comic book work so well but then added so much fluff and padding onto it that all of my goodwill is starting to slip and I just want them to get on with the big showdown against their parents.

i managed three episodes and then bailed. focusing on the grown ups was such a bad idea. the awkward flirting between chase/gert, the schoolroom sequences with alex trying to get the group back together and the GANGSTA DIALOGUE at the construction site was all so painfully tin eared.

I'm late to Desus and Mero but it looks like that has a growing critical consensus here as well? When it works, it's great but they sometimes stray into bullshit that makes it difficult to not fast forward through. Monday had an extended MST3K-style narration of lions fucking that went on for what felt like five minutes.

DJP otm

Any top 10 list of shows of the year surely has to include Legion

even this year I could safely make a top 30 without it

i think i may be over noah hawley tbh

yeah I didn't even bother w/ Fargo s3 despite the presence of Carrie Coon

she was great on it! but the "look at me i am a very talky inscrutably evil bad guy"/"look at me i am the silent heavy" schtick has finally turned into a formula.
hawley's also something of a sadist about extended uncomfortable takes that are meant to inspire fight or flight and i don't need that right now.

Legion was great. Can't wait for season 2.

re: extended uncomfortable takes, I think the ASL on this season of Mr. Robot has to be around two minutes.

Legion was RAD RAD RAD

my top 10+ a few more for this year

Legion
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
Mindhunter
Marvelous Mrs Maisel
The Good Place
Westworld
The Deuce
Leftovers
Riverdale
GLOW
Gotham
American Gods
Big Little Lies

I need to check out American Gods

it's made with you in mind methinks

it’s pretty great. Bryan Fuller at his Fuller-iest

though at times it reminds me of just how VERY 90’s the book was, especially “i am the internet” Tecnical Boy who is a facepalm on-screen no matter how you stage him

I never read the book as it came out right at the height of my "the only good thing Gaiman ever did was Good Omens" phase

it was my favorite thing

OK I feel a little churlish. Episodes 4 and 5 of Mrs Maisel address head-on the issues about standup taking time to get good at. I still think Bornstein and Lenny are too easily wowed at the beginning but I basically take it back.

american gods might be the worst fuller thing since Dead Like Me